MY MOTHER HANGS OUT WITH A MAN I’VE NEVER MET

Years later, I found it thrown in a drawer with 
bits of paper, news clippings,
The Watchtower pamphlets wrinkled with coffee stains,
multicolored rubber bands, outdated coupons, buttons from the void—
            all the nesting that was her life.

They were nestled side by side in an old series
of B&W photographs taken in one of those booths at an arcade—
a handsome young man twenty years her junior, 
twisting their faces into silly expressions, 
so at ease with each other—
her laughter bursting through its plastic laminate,
            filling the air even now.

There was a man, I recall, 
a German teacher from her ESL department;
he’d nicknamed her Penn and they became best friends but—
            my mother with yellow rubber gloves standing at kitchen sink
            endlessly washing dishes;
            my mother with yellow rubber gloves bent over toilets
            permeated with the stinging scent of Pine Sol;
            my mother sorting laundry, ironing, cooking, driving us to lessons— 

My mother who, in family portraits, random snapshots
on family vacations, at community hall parties, at my own wedding; 
always with the group yet always apart, 
            my mother who never smiled—

and I wondered what a lifetime of not smiling 
must have been like; 
high cheekbones, flawless butter-creamed skin and the face 
so often talked about among their circle of friends; 
a face draped with a pink and gold sari, 
jewels dangling from nose to ear, 
what he always told us with a dazed look in his eyes,
            as if from a dream he once had— 

this beauty, captured inside the awestruck pause
of a wedding day and then carried away across oceans, across time—
            every frame, laughing.

Natasha N. Deonarain is the author of two chapbooks, 50 études for piano (Assure Press Publishing) and urban disorders (Finishing Line Press). She’s the winner of the 2020 Three Sisters Award by NELLE magazine and Best of the Net Nominee by Rogue Agent Journal. Her work has been featured in numerous print and online poetry journals. She was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada and now lives in Arizona.